The present invention relates to the telephone art and, in particular, to a combination telephone and voice-mail transceiver.
Answering machines are commonly available devices which allow the receiving party of a telephone call to elect to store an incoming caller's message to an electronic storage medium. Thus, if the receiving party is not available to take the call, or if he or she is available yet elects not to directly talk with a calling party, they may simply allow the answering machine to store the caller's voice message.
In addition, voice-mail systems have been created which allow a calling party the opportunity to record for later playback by the receiving party a given communication. Voice-mail systems, however, are normally either telephone company provided or are provided by companies on private branch exchanges. Thus, they are not generally available to the public, to the same level that answering machines have become commonplace. In addition, with telephone company provided voice-mail, as with a standard answering machine message, the calling party spends total message real time on the telephone line while the message for the receiving party is being recorded, thereby incurring a billing for the entire real time use of the telephone network.
As more people become familiar with voice-mail, there is a growing tendency to utilize its services, but for the fact that it is only available on PBX and via telephone company provided service as described above. It would be desirable, therefore, if a calling party calling from a standard office or residential telephone unit would be given the opportunity to select making a standard call in real time or recording and transmitting a voice-mail message to his or her receiving party.
In addition, it would be desirable if the calling terminals provided voice-mail reception capabilities with a convenient notice and access by the telephone terminal users.